The Teens in Tech Official Blog

Recently we’ve seen a large amount of commercial spam and other illegal content posted at Teens in Tech. We strictly forbid such content and will make every attempt to remove it immediately. Please refer to our Terms of Service for the complete information about what we consider acceptable content. Note in particular:

C. In connection with User Submissions, you agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant Teens in Tech all of the license rights granted herein; (ii) publish falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage Teens in Tech or any third-party; (iii) submit material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate; (iv) post advertisements or solicitations of business; or (v) impersonate another person.

Teens in Tech is a safe site for teens with content created by teens. As such, all material posted here must be suitable for anyone 17 and under and must not contain any illegal materials.

Over the last two months, the Teens in Tech engineering and product teams have been working very hard to bring you Teens in Tech 2.0, and I’m very happy to announce that we are almost ready to release the latest edition of the Teens in Tech web software to the public.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in 2.0:

-Brand new website design
-Partner Advertising
-Featured Bloggers
-… and much more!

We also have a special surprise when we release 2.0, which you’ll have to look out for when we launch!

Until then, happy posting!

Daniel and Team

Our Business Development Team at Teens in Tech received a call to action for programmer teens from B/C Interactive, who has  extended an offer for teens to enter their Programming Challenge.

They’re looking for teens who can develop iPhone applications and the contest ends September 1, 2009.

To participate in the contest, check out B/C Interactive’s challenge Web site at easyiphonecontest.com

Some of the possible prizes and more information is given after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although we do not believe users are going to be impacted, the report by Net News Daily, and then followed up by The Inquisitr, saying that Teens in Tech’s WordPress admin panel was breached by a hacker is correct. We are working with numerous parties, including our legal representation, to ensure any potentially identifiable user data will remain safe, and that there will be no repeat of this incident.

I also wanted to personally clarify some of the numbers quoted in the reports, which suggest I have overstated our current position. We are in the early phase of our network. We are proud of what we have accomplished so far, and have aggressive growth plans. At this time, we have more than 400 active users, and 600 over our network sites. These sites see more than 10,000 individual accesses monthly, and are expanding.

Once again, I wanted to personally insure that our users’ data and security is our number one goal.

I will continue to update this blog and our official Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/teensintech to make sure you are informed.

Thanks,

Daniel Brusilovsky

Update: We have sent an important email to all of our users. If you are a user of Teens in Tech, we strongly suggest that users taken action.

Today is a very exciting day at Teens in Tech. From now on, Teens in Tech, along with Youth Bloggers Network and the Teens in Tech Conference, are becoming products of Teens in Tech Networks. Everyone who works at Teens in Tech, now works at Teens in Tech Networks, and besides the name change, and sites becoming products, that’s the big news.

We also have some big stuff coming in the pipeline with Teens in Tech 2.0 that we are excited to tell you all in the next few weeks. Thanks for all the current support, and lets keep rocking! Also, a big shout out to our amazing designer Colin Toomey, and developer Michael Castilla. Teens in Tech Networks awesome site wouldn’t be possible with out them.

-Daniel Brusilovsky

The team here at Teens in Tech would like to honor all of our fathers, especially those fathers who have supported all of our efforts as teens to promote technology. It’s often times a very taxing effort, and we appreciate all the work they’ve done for us. Happy Father’s Day!

This post also starts the introduction of the Teenage Life Series, a series of blog posts that will occur every Sunday. They’ll cover what matters to teenagers – of course we’ll talk about the latest technology news, but also news affecting us around the world. This is our round-up of all things interesting for teens and by teens, be it Zach Galifanakis in The Hangover or Steve Jobs’ liver transplant. We’ll start that round-up with a hot topic next Sunday. We’ve got a few in mind but if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

This is just another example of how we want Teens in Tech to be more than just a site for teens interested in technology, but a community for all teens. We hope this is a step forward, and that it’s a successful endeavor.

One of the staples of teenage life is summer camp. Our Chief Technological Officer, Mike Cohen, who’s not a teen (but not far removed!) forwarded this along to the Teens in Tech staff and we’ve decided to share it with all teens who might be interested.

Check out more info below the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time here at Teens in Tech, we like to spotlight companies and initiatives that share our views – be it on starting a company and the entrepeneurial spirit or the activities of teens worldwide.

Logo for Digital Open Initiative

Digital Open is a free and open-source technology project. Blah, blah, blah, we’ve all heard that before. So what’s the catch? Digital Open is only open to youth 17 years or younger. It spotlights teens who go above and beyond in the world of technology, and there are a variety of prizes that go to the winner in each category.

For more info, check out Digital Open at http://digitalopen.org and help spotlight teenage involvement in free and open-source technology!

One of my personal beliefs is that you always need to work with people smarter then yourself. I’ve been very lucky to have such a great Board of Advisers at Teens in Tech. Well today I’d like to announce a new Board member! Louis Gray works in corporate marketing at BlueArc, a Silicon Valley technology company in the high performance network storage space, where he has worked since January of 2001. His focus there is on public relations, demand generation and content creation. Prior to BlueArc, he was the Web Marketing Manager for 3Cube, a communications application service provider, sold to Oracle in 2001. Prior to 3Cube, he was an e-commerce analyst for Internet Valley, Inc. Louis runs a successful blog focused on Silicon Valley and early adopters at louisgray.com. He is also an advisor to fellow startups BuzzGain, ReadBurner and SocialToo.

Louis brings years of experience to his work, and having him join the Teens in Tech Board of Advisers just makes our current Board event better. Louis joins current members Chris Yeh, Daniel Ha, Florian Seroussi, Robert Scoble, and Sam Lessin. You can follow Louis on Twitter as well!

I’ll be working very closely with Louis and the Board on improving Teens in Tech and our other products.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been battling a spam problem with Teens in Tech, which most of you have noticed. Well, today I’m very happy to announce that Teens in Tech will hopefully not have to deal with spam any longer!

We’ve taken the initiative in three directions:

1. Signup Question. During registration we’ve added a signup question which you have to answer correctly in order to get an account. We installed this a few weeks ago, and it seemed to work. This plugin places a question on the signup form to help fight spammers who try to create blogs automatically.

2. WP-Captcha. Seems like the simple way, because it’s a great simple plugin. The plugin blocks automated comment spam without resorting to CAPTCHAs. It does so by validating a hash based on time (and some other parameters) using AJAX when the form is posted. Comments posted via automated means will not have a hash or will have an expired hash and will be rejected. Unlike using a captcha, this does not place any burden on the commenter.

3. Invites. We’ve spent a lot of time developing and researching an invite plugin for our users. Now, if your registered, you can generate a specific invite code to hand out to your friends so they can use Teens in Tech as well!

We’ve also added a feature where the ‘Hello World’ posts won’t appear on the homepage. As Daniel mentioned earlier, we’ll be opening to the public shortly, but are working on some tricks up our sleeves. If you have any problems with spam, feel free to email me directly.

Thanks,

Mike Cohen
CTO/COO, Teens in Tech